Authors: Debora Geary
Her intern looked confused, but curious.
“You don’t need to make more work for
yourself to try to keep me busy.
I
didn’t come back for that.”
“I know.”
And it
was lovely to see that shift.
“But
busy in the right ways can be a beautiful thing.
Summer is a wonderful time to explore the fullness of who we
are.
I want to hold a workshop
where we use yoga to encourage people to take a look inside and discover
something new about themselves.
I
was hoping you might help me with the workshop design and supporting the people
who come to class.”
Elsie looked a little panicked.
“I can barely fix my own yoga poses.
I’m not ready to be fixing anyone
else’s.”
She wasn’t as far away as she thought, but Nat left that
alone.
“You’re a trained
psychologist.
Supporting people
through change is what you do.”
“You want me to do psychology?
Here?”
Elsie
looked like she’d been asked to dance naked in the streets.
And then she just looked sad.
“I don’t think I’m a therapist
anymore.
I don’t think it’s what
I’m meant to do.”
Nat wasn’t at all convinced of that, but she knew how to be
patient.
Some truths were best
discovered slowly.
“I wasn’t
thinking of anything too complicated.
Help me come up with some short group exercises we can do during the
classes.
Ways to be mindful, to
focus on a question or an idea that might help participants explore themselves
in a new way.
Use your own journey
as a guide.”
Total silence.
Nat
waited patiently, trusting the rightness of the idea.
It had come to her in the night, fully formed.
She knew better than to ignore that
kind of gift.
Elsie’s smile, when it came, was worth waiting for.
“I can do that.”
“Good.”
Nat leaned
over for her bag, pulling out a notebook.
“Let’s brainstorm.
We start
in two days.”
She hid a grin
as Elsie’s tea nearly came out her nose.
She really hadn’t read the flyer.
~ ~ ~
She knew he was there.
Lizard waved distractedly at a friend down the hallway and headed out of
the building, wondering what the hell Josh was doing skulking outside her
computers class.
She was pretty
sure he was one of those geek types who had graduated without even blinking
hard.
And if he was going to skulk, he could at least do it without
attracting so much attention.
Okay, maybe she was a little grumpy.
Sitting through a lecture on the impact of online social
networks while half the class was on their phones texting would have been
funny, if she hadn’t heard echoes of half of their conversations in her
head.
Her mind barriers were
totally leaky today, and she had no idea why.
And the professor had no idea how many of his students
wanted to get naked with somebody on the other end of their phone.
Which wasn’t helping her grumpy quotient at all, given that the
closest-to-naked guy in her life was a week old and liked to nap all day.
Josh wasn’t an option—for naked or anything else.
Especially if he was going to skulk.
She walked out the main doors and found her stalker sitting on
the end of a bench, nose in a computer.
He looked up as she got closer—there were benefits to walking like
an elephant.
“Hey.
Glad I caught you.
Want to grab a burger?”
“No.”
Her stomach
growled loud enough to cast its own vote.
“I’ll get something on the way to the office—I have to work on some
client maps.”
She didn’t add that
her fingers itched to borrow the prototype tool his team had worked up.
Knowing it could be done faster made
doing things the old-fashioned way really annoying.
He grinned.
“We
have a version-one web interface ready.
Totally alpha, but Danny’d appreciate if you use it some, let him know
where the bugs are.”
What, he was reading minds today?
“Is that why you’re skulking outside my class—Danny
can’t find his email send button?”
He stood up to walk with her, ignoring the pointed lack of
invitation.
“Nope.
But since I’m here, I figured I could
deliver the message.
Got another
one, too—the meeting with the suits is set up for Thursday, 10 a.m.”
There had to be something on her schedule then.
“I’ll let you know if I can make
it.
Might be busy.”
“It’s one of the open windows you gave me.”
His voice was still casual, but his
mind was coiled and a little annoyed.
“I’ve got ten busy businesspeople all organized to show up, so it would
be handy if you could make it.”
Lizard debated.
Hard.
And then decided it was probably time
to grow up and stop making his life difficult just because he tangled her
insides.
This was business, not
personal—and it wasn’t his fault her insides still got stupid
sometimes.
“Fine, I’ll be there.”
A terrible thought occurred to
her.
“Do I have to wear a suit?”
The picture of her in a suit—a really sexy red
one—that flashed through his mind was totally unnerving.
He grinned and angled left onto the
sidewalk.
“Nah.
They expect somebody to look like a
grown-up, but that’s my job.
Everyone else just has to sound smart.
Danny will likely be in ratty jeans and a Grateful
Dead t-shirt, so you’ll have to work at it some if you want to be the most
underdressed person in the room.”
Dammit, he was laughing at her.
Inside his head, but still.
And they were almost at the Patty Shack, which meant he was
steering her in more ways than one.
Growing up had its limits.
“Are you done with all your messages now?”
She shifted her monster backpack between them, attempting to
roadblock his herding efforts.
“And I don’t have time for food.”
He wrapped his arm around her shoulders, backpack and all, a
casual and very effective vise.
“We’ll get takeout and go to your office.
I’ll show you the new web interface and then leave you to
slave over your maps in peace.
You
want one patty or two?”
Resistance was futile, especially now that she could smell
burger fumes.
Her stomach, always
the traitor.
“Two.
And you could just email me the web
thing.
I’ll figure it out.”
“I could.”
He
grinned and placed his order.
“But
I’m not quite done with you yet.”
Lizard answered the Patty Shack guy on autopilot.
Josh’s mind had suddenly shrouded in a
way that made the discomfort in her belly breed like bunnies.
A mind probe got her nowhere, and
digging any deeper was the kind of thing that would probably make Grammie smite
her from heaven.
He took her hand and headed over to the waiting area, out of the
way of the main line.
And then
made her squirm in silence as he chatted casually with some cute kid who
apparently lived down the street.
An old lady walked by and beamed at them.
It wasn’t what it looked like.
Panic inched up Lizard’s throat.
She grabbed their separately bagged orders and shoved one in
Josh’s hands.
Maybe she could
ditch him on the cute kid.
“Gotta
go—email me the link.”
He exchanged some kind of secret-code handshake with the kid and
caught up to her in two strides.
“I’m starving.
You got any
ketchup at the office?”
Screw this.
She
stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk and nailed him with her best badass
stare.
“What do you want, Josh?”
His eyes suddenly did something she’d never seen
before—they looked uncertain.
“I was going to leave this for later, so that business and personal
stuff didn’t get tangled.
But
that’s bullshit, because they’re already all mixed up.”
He shoved his hands in his
pockets.
“Come to the beach with
me tonight.
I’ll bring some music,
we can have a fire, talk a little.”
There was no mistaking what he meant.
The words might have left some room for waffling.
His mind was entirely clear.
Lizard felt something inside start to
bleed.
“You mean like a date?”
“Yeah.”
She clutched her burger bag, suddenly very unhungry—and
prayed for the words to lift her out of hell.
“I can’t.
You’re my client.”
“I’m pretty sure there’s a statute of limitations on that
stuff.”
He turned to walk again,
heading toward her office.
“But
we’re probably getting hooked up again work-wise with the maps, so yeah, it
would be tangled.”
His eyes asked the question.
Did she care?
She should.
It
should be a rule.
A hulking big
one with no get-out-of-jail-free card.
It was probably in one of those stupid realtor courses she’d taken.
His fingers slid into hers.
“I’d like you to come.”
Lizard tried to stay on her feet as her foundations shook.
And shuddered as a tiny sliver of hope
tried to run straight from his fingers into her belly.
Then she took a deep breath.
Lizard Monroe wasn’t stupid anymore.
“I can’t.”
She squeezed his fingers once—a kind of
good-bye—and then choked as insanity grabbed her throat and pushed out
two more words.
“Not yet.”
Her clomping steps, matched to his, were all that broke the
silence.
Then he squeezed her
fingers back.
“Okay.
Let me know when you are.
I’ll email you the web thing.”
She watched him stroll away down the sidewalk, mind pummeled by
wordless, confused torment.
And
then looked down at the totally mangled burger bag in her hands.
Crap.
Just.
Crap.
~ ~ ~
Elsie beamed into Vero’s front hallway, holding her new guitar
tightly.
“That’s a lovely instrument, my dear.”
Vero emerged from the kitchen, two glasses of iced tea in
her hands.
“I didn’t know you
played.”
“I don’t.”
Elsie
grinned, feeling the sunbeams dancing in her belly.
“Or, I
didn’t
.
Nat wants to do a special yoga workshop
and we were brainstorming and wanted some live music and she sent me off to
talk to this guy she knows, who plays, but also teaches guitar, and…”
She stopped, breathless, and
giggled.
“Sorry, I guess I’m a bit
excited.”
“It’s good breath control.”
Vero smiled and stepped into the music room.
“Opera is often written in that state
of tripping excitement.
I used to
think perhaps that was why the composers never gave us enough opportunities to
breathe.”
It was hard to imagine Vero needing more air.
Elsie was well aware she took three
breaths to Vero’s one when they sang together.
Vero set down the iced tea and reached for the guitar, strumming
lightly.
“It has a lovely
tone.
You’re going to learn to
play, then?”
She picked out a
light and simple melody.
Elsie sighed, a little jealous.
It had taken her ten minutes just to learn how to finger her
first chord.
“I’m going to try.
Hector says it won’t take long to learn to play easy accompaniments when I
sing.”